Coalition Supports Bill Reversing Trump Attacks on Clean Water

The Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition is supporting a bill introduced today in the U.S. House of Representatives that reverses the Trump Administration’s roll-back of clean water protections. The “Clean Water for All Act” stops the Trump Administration’s removal of protections for streams and wetlands—waters that feed public drinking water supplies for more than 117 million people across the country, including nearly 30 million people in the Great Lakes states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

“We wholeheartedly support this bill. Clean water is a basic need. With many of our cities and towns living with unsafe drinking water, we need more – not less – protection for clean water. We cannot allow pollution into small waterways without it affecting the rest of the water we all depend on. We all know wetlands and streams flow into small rivers, which flow into bigger rivers, and into lakes, including our Great Lakes, and ultimately the ocean. We look forward to working with elected officials to support this bill and protect our drinking water, our Great Lakes, and our public health.”

Within two years of the bill’s passage, a new clean water rule is to be crafted by the administrator of the EPA and secretary of the Army. According to the bill, the rule must prevent any: degradation of surface water quality; increased contaminant levels in drinking water sources; increased risks to human life or property; and disproportionate adverse impacts on minority or low-income populations.